Alys had to admit that her first criminal hunt was certainly giving her an education. She'd known about the existence of people like smugglers and fences, but this was her first opportunity to actually meet such crooks in the flesh.

"How are we going to handle this, Galf?" she asked her mentor as they crossed the town to Argus's store.

"Sneaky is out. Nobody is going to mistake us for anything other than fighters unless we spend time we haven't got on disguises. Only way to get the information is to bribe, force, or trick it out of him."

"So if trick isn't going to work, and we're not exactly made of meseta, that just leaves force. Good. I like force."

"Bloodthirsty whelp, aren't you?"

The fifteen-year-old hunter shrugged.

"Hey, you didn't want to make trouble for our client for buying from a fence. That doesn't mean we can't make trouble for the fence himself."

Galf gave her a quirky half-smile.

"You're learning, kid."

"So how are we going to handle it?" Alys repeated, wanting specifics.

"Not sure yet. Have to take a look at the situation first."

Finding Argus's shop wasn't particularly difficult; the traditional satchel sign of the apothecary hung outside, slowly creaking in the faint mountain breeze. Like many of the town's buildings it was free-standing, and Alys and Galf took a stroll past it and around the block to get a look from all sides. A plan was quickly formed, and Alys walked into the shop alone.

It was not what she had expected; Alys was young yet, and hadn't quite worked life's cliches out of her system. Rather than a dark, close den filled with cramped shelves, she was surprised to find Argus's store was light and airy, with a faint aroma of herbs. The scent reminded her faintly of one of her mother's potpourri jars, a clean scent that made her think of home and a life that had passed. A bell jingled merrily as she entered. There were no other customers, which she and Galf had been fairly certain of--no one had entered or left in the ten minutes before Alys did.

"May I help you?"

The shopkeeper was about Alys's height, but soft and plump with graying whiskers. His face was round, and with his rosy cheeks and broad smile looked friendly, even jolly. Like the store he was nothing like her expectations, which had been more along the lines of a weaselly rat. Given that cliches only became cliches because they were true at least some of the time, she started to wonder if she was in the wrong place.

"Argus?"

"Yes, indeed, I am. Now, you look to be...a guard, perhaps? Or a hunter? Would you be interested in monomate to deal with injuries? Perhaps a generalized poison antidote, if you intend to venture into the wilderness? Abe Frogs will be maturing in record numbers thanks to the high rainfall this season, and you can't be too prepared."

"Good advice," Alys agreed. "For instance, you've got a nice little shop here. Are you prepared to answer questions about how you pay for it?"

"Of course. Actually, it's quite an amusing story. There was this five-legged scorpirus, you see, and it--"

"I'm not amused."

"Well, really, I'd think you'd at least wait for the end of the first sentence."

"Argus, I work for Preston Cross," Alys told him. "He's paying me to be unamused. After what you did to him that's going to be a pretty universal attitude among his employees. Or, at least, those of us who carry sharp and pointed metal objects."

She drew a slasher just in case Argus learned better with visual aids.

"But I don't understand," Argus said. "I don't owe Preston Cross anything, either merchandise or payment."

"It's not what you haven't given him, Argus; it's what you did. You might remember a case, with two daggers?"

"Daggers?" He wasn't admitting anything--probably not a bad decision on his part, given that he couldn't be sure Alys wasn't a town guard trying to bluff a confession out of him. Probably it was more of a defense mechanism than a conscious thought, a mental reflex for a fence. "Miss, this is a herbalist's shop. I sell medicines, not weapons. Now, if that's what you're after, I suggest you try Andrew Janec's, just two shops down and three over. I'm sure that he–"

"It's not even noon yet, Argus. I try to save my daily serving of bull for a little later in the day." She was fairly proud of that line, though she figured it needed some work.

"I, that is to say--"

"How about we cut through the crap here, okay? You're a fence. You sold Preston Cross a pair of fancy daggers, about which he didn't ask questions. He probably should have, because there turned out to be some fairly serious issues with his purchase, such as how it exploded in his house and ruined part of his collection. Am I making myself clear, Argus? Cross wants to have a few words with the seller, so how about you go ahead and tell me who that was, so we can overlook questions about why you foisted the daggers off on my client on the first place."

-X X X-

He should have known better, Argus told himself. He wasn't some infant. He'd been in this game as long as the girl had been alive, and he'd known the stench of trouble when it came into his shop with those daggers. Fear and greed had overridden good sense, though, as they so often did. And now look where he was, face to face with some punk kid enforcer. The young ones were the worst--full of themselves and with something to prove. They'd ask first and think (about how a respectable businessman like Argus with no evidence against him would be happy to report the young thug to the guard) only after a painful beating had been delivered and valuable merchandise smashed. That wouldn't keep Preston Cross from disowning them later, but the problem was now.

And worst of all, it was about that derned set of knives he'd foisted off on Cross. Anything else, he'd have laughed it off, but this had come around to bite Argus in the rump just like he'd been afraid it would. If it had truly done what she'd said it had (and who was to say it hadn't? Not Argus, that was for sure!) Then this was going to go on for a lot more than one encounter with one hotheaded teenage girl.

Fortunately, Argus was a farsighted man. Recognizing that his business had a certain element of risk, he was prepared to exercise the better part of valor at a moment's notice. More than prepared, actually; he'd been suspecting this would happen ever since he'd gotten involved in this mess.

"All right," he said with a heavy sigh, his shoulders sagging miserably. Always make them think they've gained the upper hand, he thought. It always put the prancing fighter-types on a smug pedestal, and when a person's nose was that high in the air it tended to miss what was slipping beneath it. "I've got to live in this town, too."

"So what was the name?" she asked.

"Hey, I don't remember every transaction that goes on here. I do a fair amount of business. That's why I keep records." Stupid girl looked like she believed it, too. As if he'd keep incriminating names and details written down in his own hand! He had books, sure, but that was to track the numbers, not the names. "I'll get the name for you, then, hey, we can all be happy."

The girl nodded, a smug grin on her face. Thought she'd won out over him just because she could--probably--kick his hindquarters to Molcum and back again. Her kind always did.

Argus slipped behind the counter and into one of the shop's two back rooms. One was the storeroom and laboratory, and the other his office. He kept business records in the office, but that wasn't what he wanted from it. Instead, he was looking for something else.

The back window.

It wasn't by accident that the window was large enough to climb through. In fact, he thought as he flipped the latch back, it was an example of good planning. He stuffed a bag of meseta (in high-denomination pieces for easy transport) into his pocket, then pushed the shutters. Clambering up on the sill was not effortless for a man of his bulk but not so hard as one might have expected, either. Argus was all about deceptive appearances, in one way or another. He wondered how long it would take Cross's girl to figure out that gee, maybe she ought to check why he was taking so long.

Argus chuckled at the thought, which was when a large hand reached out from the side, clenched in the front of his tunic, and pulled him the rest of the way through the window to land, sprawling, in the dust.

"Doesn't it get boring, being so predictable?" the big, gray-bearded hunter asked him pleasantly.

-X X X-

Alys waved a friendly hello when Galf ushered Argus back into the shop. It had all worked out just like her mentor had suggested: by giving Argus enough rope, he'd promptly hang himself, at least to the extent that his flight had been as much as an admission that he'd known something was wrong with the case of daggers. Plus, having his escape thwarted would hopefully take some of the fight out of the fence, making it easier to convince him to answer questions. Galf shoved Argus into a chair.

"Let's take this from the top," the hunter said. "Alys, did you tell our friend what we're after?"

"The person he got the case of daggers from. We hadn't gotten any further when he decided to make a run for it."

"Good; let's take it from there, then. Where did they come from, and why did you sell them to Cross?"

"I, that is..." He wouldn't meet Galf's gaze.

"Look, I don't know what the score is," Galf said, "but you've got to live in this town with Preston Cross, and he didn't strike me as the kind of guy who's nice to people who screw around with his collection. Heck, he doesn't even have a real job to keep him busy, so that gives him all the time in the world to plan nasty revenges on people."

"I thought you two were supposed to be the nasty revenge."

"We're hunters from the Guild," Galf clarified. "Our job is to get the one responsible for what went down, and that's not you."

"L-look, I know how you--"

Alys decided to step in, hoping that her timing was right. She smoothly stepped up to the herbalist, careful not to block Galf's line of vision, and grabbed Argus by his collar, hauling him up face-to-face.

"Listen, you sack of crawler droppings, I can tell you're scared of this seller, whomever he or she is. What you don't seem to understand, though, is that someone keeping information from me is the fifteenth-most dangerous thing in this world--and I don't see any of the top fourteen in this room just now. Except him," she amended with a nod in Galf's direction, then fixed her eyes back on Argus's with her best glare.

It worked.

"All right, all right! I don't know how you know, but yes, I was sold the daggers with specific instructions to resell them to Cross. Not that there's much chance I'd do anything else. I mean, seriously, they're nice weapons in a nice case, but Cross would give me twice what they're worth on their own because of who made them and why." He snorted derisively. "Collectors. Who can figure 'em?"

Alys wondered if she needed to rethink her own opinion, given that they'd found a point of agreement.

"Did you know why you were supposed to sell to Cross?"

"No, and I wasn't asking. He sold me the whole set for two hundred meseta. Two hundred! That's maybe a fifth of what I'd give after I haggled the seller down, on a normal sale. I couldn't pass that up–and I got a pretty good idea that maybe I shouldn't pass it up, if I wanted to stay in good health."

"So this 'he' who sold it wasn't the nicest guy."

Argus shook his head.

"Forget nasty. This guy was scary. Not scary like you two, scary like he would slice me up for the fun of it, let alone to get back at me. He had spiky green hair and eyes that never quite looked at me, if you know what I mean? Like they were always focused on something else, and I was just in the field of vision."

"What was his name?" Alys revealed her inexperience.

"He didn't tell me, and this isn't exactly a business where you make a point of asking."

"So what do you know?"

"He was maybe thirty, about as tall as your partner, there, but not as big--a little on the skinny side, even. His face was kind of sharp, and he had this little goatee that just made it worse. And I'll tell you one more thing: he had a black headband with a skull on it."

He said that like it meant something besides a complete lack of style, so Alys glanced at Galf.

"Sailors from Valhalla wear those," he explained. "It's kind of a badge of their town militia, but not really an official part of the uniform."

She'd heard of Valhalla, an island village north of Zema, which had grown up as a hive of exiles, outcasts, and general ne'er-do-wells. To a certain extent it had settled down, but was still known as a den for pirates, looters, and black marketeers. Argus's kind of place, come to think of it.

"That's right," Argus said.

"Looks like we've got somewhere to start, then," Alys said, and dropped the fence back into his seat.

"For all the good it'll do you," Argus said resentfully. "That psychotic freak'll give you all you can handle."

"You'd better wish us luck," Galf advised him. "Unlike your friend, we don't have any reason to come and see you again. C'mon, Alys."

With that parting shot, the hunters left the herbalist to his own concerns.

"If there's a Valhalla connection, we'd best make a trip up to Norl." This was a little fishing hamlet about a half-day's travel north from Zema, across the large merchants' bridge that spanned the inlet there. "We might catch up to the thief there, if he really is making for Valhalla and if he's got to travel by regular means."

"That's likely. There aren't many telepipes made each year, and the Hunter's Guild has deals with the crafters that we get to purchase most of them for our use. But the theft was two nights ago. Why would the thief stay in Norl instead of taking a boat right away?"

Galf flashed her a broad grin.

"Because Norl is a fishing village. That means every boat--and every sailor--in town is out to sea for a week at a time, filling the holds with their catch, then spend two or three days ashore resting up, selling their catch, and restocking."

"So if the thief is there, he'd have to wait for the fleet to come in a prepare to go out again."

"Exactly."

Alys returned the smile.

"In that case, I'd better try and find my walking boots, shouldn't I?"

"Yeah, I figure we'll get there just in time to interrupt our boy's dinner."

"Or girl's--the seller and the thief might not be the same person."

"Probably aren't," Galf agreed. "The thief was an expert, and that takes control, which it doesn't sound like the crazy man had much of."

"So how do we recognize him or her?"

"We don't. We let the locals do it for us. Not too many strange faces in Norl go unnoticed."

"Good point," Alys admitted.

"Hey, by the way, nice work in there."

"Thanks."

"I've gotta ask, though...fifteenth?"

She tossed him a playful grin.

"I thought I'd leave some room for improvement. You do have more to teach me, don't you?"

"Not about being a wiseacre, obviously."

She chuckled all the way to the city gates.